Welcome to the SEIGERT website

Renewing our future through solar energy. . .

Members of the SEIGERT group at Purdue University

The Solar Economy IGERT (SEIGERT)

This Solar Economy Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (SEIGERT) award supports the development of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional graduate training program of education and research in sustainable Solar Economy at the Purdue University in collaboration with University of Delaware, University of Texas at El Paso, Sandia National Lab, National Renewable Energy Lab, Helmholtz Centre Berlin for Materials and Energy, and several industrial partners.

We use the term 'Solar Economy' to refer to a future state of affairs where nearly all the energy needed for electricity, transportation, heat, chemicals and food is based on sustainable supply of sunlight. To enable such a future state, this SEIGERT is primarily rooted in finding interdisciplinary technical solutions to the most important challenges of sun-to-electricity and sun-to-fuel within the context of harmonious coexistence with other uses of solar energy. In order to identify breakthrough technical solutions and gain a thorough insight into the complexity of a solar economy, a large number of interdisciplinary solutions will be generated and rapidly assessed for their system-wide impact.

The SEIGERT establishes a new vision and program for integrating education and training that will reveal the complexity of this system to individuals from the diverse backgrounds necessary to address the future key energy challenges. The transition away from fossil fuels to a new Solar Economy necessitates major changes to the U.S. infrastructure and redefines the skill set required by our workforce. The SEIGERT program will address this need by developing lectures, course modules, training modules, and simulation tools that will define a new paradigm for interdisciplinary education and training in renewable energy.